


chaos, vengeance, love

by The_Eclectic_Bookworm



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, references to past giles/ethan & giles/jenny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 14:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15463110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Eclectic_Bookworm/pseuds/The_Eclectic_Bookworm
Summary: After Rupert Giles is killed by Angelus, Ethan comes to pay his respects (sort of) and makes a friend at Ripper's grave (kind of).





	chaos, vengeance, love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Via Maynard Crowley Whitmore (RedHairGreenStockings)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHairGreenStockings/gifts).



Rupert Giles always did have a passion for basket cases. This is the first thing Ethan thinks when he finds himself standing in front of what is left of the soft, sweet woman he’d seen on Ripper’s arm—he says _what is left_ because whatever’s looking at him is hollowed-out and empty. Whatever softness she possessed was killed along with his Ripper.

Not— _his_ Ripper. Not exactly. Ethan doesn’t think he can lay claim to the Watcher in the same way this woman can, but he doubts she wants all that much to do with the boy Ethan had loved, so. They’re at something of a stalemate. Awkwardly, he nods, then steps up next to the grave, setting down his bouquet of red roses.

The woman flinches as though she’s been hit.

“Surprised?” Ethan can’t keep the hurt out of his voice. It’d be covered up with seven to ten layers of malice, normally, but—the only man he’s ever loved is dead—he’s not at the top of his game at the moment.

“I don’t like red roses,” says the woman stiffly.

“They too romantic for you?”

“Don’t be an idiot, Ethan, I know you and Rupert dated, I’m fine with that,” says the woman in a dismissive, sharp way that has a ring of truth to it. “The bastard who killed him laid him to rest on my bed _surrounded_ by a fucking flower shop.”

Ethan takes another look at the woman. He thinks about the burned-out husk of the factory he’d passed on his way into Sunnydale. _“You’re_ the one that killed Angelus,” he says, and lets out an incredulous laugh. “Bloody hell! Fucked up everyone’s prophecies and portents, you did—”

“It was supposed to be me who died,” says the woman matter-of-factly. “It should have been me who died.”

“I think the both of us would’ve been quite a lot happier if it had been,” says Ethan, a bitter smile twisting his face.

He’s surprised, somewhat, when the woman looks up at him and her face softens ever so slightly. “Yeah,” she says, her voice a touch warmer. Then, “I’d have waited for you to show up, if I’d known you were going to come at all. It was really pretty cathartic to watch the son of a bitch burn.”

“I’d imagine,” says Ethan, and steps closer to the woman. “I never caught your name.”

“Jen—” The woman stops, and just for a moment, her face crumples. She swallows, hard. “Janna,” she says.

“More than one name?” Ethan’s intrigued.

“No,” says Janna in a small voice. “No, Jenny Calendar died with him.” She gestures to the grave. “I was always—supposed to be Janna, I guess. Should’ve stuck with that from the beginning, and maybe—”

She’s talking grief-stricken nonsense. Ethan leans down and picks up the roses, examining them. “Doesn’t seem quite as appropriate or romantic with you here putting a damper on everything,” he says, and is surprised to find that he means it as a joke. Something about Janna’s all-consuming grief is—it’s as though they’re two sides of the same coin. Janus, among many other things, has always been the god of duality. “Was thinking I’d show up, say a few words, look all romantic and dramatic, and then—bugger off back to England, I guess.”

“Hmm,” says Janna, her eyes on the headstone.

“Though I suppose I won’t be coming back here anytime soon,” says Ethan. “Never liked it.” Something occurs to him, and he turns to Janna. “How’d that Slayer of his take the news?”

“I don’t know,” says Janna. “I went and I killed Angelus and I’ve been—” She shrugs, jerkily. “No one sought me out to ask how I’ve been doing,” she says. “And I’ve been too busy planning the funeral, setting up the headstone, killing Spike and Dru—”

“You killed Spike and Drusilla?” Ethan thinks this is a bit of a stretch. Angelus always was a bit overconfident, but Spike and Dru are wily and wary enough to evade a slip of a thing like Janna.

“In theory,” says Janna vaguely, which Ethan takes to mean that she made a lot of far-fetched plans and didn’t follow through. “And anyway—Buffy never liked me.”

“Course she didn’t,” says Ethan, scoffing. “She imprinted on Ripper like some little lost puppy. He’s hopeless like that.” He stops, then, with a horrible twist in his chest, says, _“Was,_ ” and is terribly afraid he might cry in front of Janna.

Janna looks blankly up at him. Then she says, “I could do with some chaos, I think.”

Ethan blinks, surprised enough to forget about his grief. “You?” he says. “You’ve got the most disgustingly noble heart I’ve ever come across. Chaos wouldn’t know what to do with you.”

“I don’t care,” says Janna, and looks back down at the headstone. “I want—to see—things fall apart.”

“He wouldn’t be happy to see you like this,” says Ethan, because he knows it’s true: Ripper had looked at Janna (Rupert had looked at Jenny?) with soft eyes and trembling hands and an almost worshipful expression—sickening, the way he’d idealized her. Ethan rather likes this mess of a woman: she’s a good person, and she’d probably help him wreak some havoc if he shoved her into it. She’s grieving, and not thinking clearly, and easily malleable.

But one memory sticks with Ethan, his most recent one of Ripper: the way his hands had trembled as he’d reached for his Jenny on the floor of that costume shop, and the way he’d pulled her into his arms and held her tight. If it were anyone else, Ethan would enjoy having a partner and a companion in chaos, but—this is someone Ripper loved. If there’s one thing he can do for the only man he ever _really_ loved, it’s—

“Stay here,” says Ethan. “Stay with those kids. They need you.”

Janna looks genuinely startled by this. Ethan supposes he’d be startled too, hearing himself say something even remotely logical—maybe Ripper _has_ left his mark on Ethan, just a little bit. It isn’t a wholly unpleasant thought to have. “You’re not going to tell me to go ahead and kill more things?” she asks, sounding almost disappointed.

“No,” says Ethan. “It wouldn’t do you any good, and it wouldn’t do chaos any good either. A Slayer still needs some kind of a Watcher—if that girl’s slacking off, vampires’ll overrun the earth before I can wreak a bit more havoc. Those kids could use some guidance, I think.”

Janna scoffs. “Look at me,” she says. “I loved a guy so much it got him _killed,_ and you think—”

“You loved a fellow who got someone else killed,” Ethan points out, “and he figured himself out, eventually. You will too. I’m saving you a bit of time, though, by saying that chaos won’t want you and vengeance doesn’t like you and you know both of those things well enough— _so,_ ” he finishes.

“And you’re not staying?”

“No, I’m planning to work out my grief by causing some minor havoc in a small urban area,” says Ethan conversationally. “That or I think I’ll get very drunk and cry a lot. Haven’t made up my mind just yet.”

Janna bites her lip, then nods. It’s strange, seeing her without gentleness, without confidence. It’s as though some integral part of her has been stripped away. She’ll build it back, Ethan thinks, broken but still true, just like Ripper managed—he touched her life well enough that she’ll be able to learn how to do as he did. “Hey,” she says. “You should know—you’re always welcome at my place for a drink.”

“Even though I got you possessed by a demon that one time?” Ethan quips.

Janna’s mouth trembles and she says, “It didn’t hurt half as much as losing him did. And—and I didn’t even _know_ I could hurt this much—”

“That’s the fucking trick about Ripper,” says Ethan with a bitter laugh in his voice. “He reels you in ‘till you don’t realize you love him beyond the telling of it, and then he’s—gone. And you’re left with this horrible empty hollow in your chest and a thousand different things you never told him.”

“Yeah,” says Janna, “yeah,” and goes back to staring at the headstone. _Rupert Edmund Giles,_ it reads, and Ethan realizes for the first time that he’d never once asked Ripper’s middle name.


End file.
